TAKE NOTE

Take note to clean the air conditioner. I noticed at school that the principal was cleaning the A/C units. So when I got home I decided to do the same. Nasty! Maybe because I never had a A/C unit back home, but now I know what to do regularly. You don't want that nasty stuff going up in your lungs.
nasty dust after how long???

NBA FINALS and WORLD CUP

A busy month in sports seeing the Miami Heat!!! Win the NBA Finals over the Dallas Mavericks storming back from two games down to win four in a row! Wow, Dwayne Wade is the man bringing his team back from near nothing. Then in World Cup the Japan team aka "Samurai Blue" bowed out were they couldn't even muster a victory in their group. Too bad also for the neighbors across the sea, Korea with Mr. Ahn. Darn. A suprise though is team Ghana! Gotta root for the underdog, they are quite an exciting team.

ONLY 3 YEARS AGO ...

Sorting through my stuff to move found some old pics of when I first came to Tatsuno, Japan 3 years ago ... oh how 懐かしい, なつかしい, natsukashii ... nostalgic, memories ... 私は時々懐かしい日本生活 ... 思い出す...

TATSUNO HIGH SCHOOL

Friday Tatsuno High School's culture fesitval. Kim was nice enough to invite me and Daniel to take part, or just walk around and cause some havoc. Luckily the nice teachers at my school let me take the day off to hang out at HS. I always heard that the HS culture festivals were alot different than the JHS ones, so I wanted to check it out for myself. The JHS culture festival is pretty tame with it being only a half day or so, where as the HS one is two days long. JHS contains alot of chorus singing which isn't so exciting after you see 3 to 5 classes, none of that at HS. At HS there were plenty of rock bands, dances, skits, and other various things all around school such as games and tea ceremony. My favorite part was the food court though, nothing like kids cooking up a good meal. Different classes had different food booths ranging from hot cake, ice cream, french fries, tacoyaki, soba, and more. Daniel was working the rounds by using his old students to hook up the food, good work! Then met some of Kim's cheeky students who carefully coded colored drinks with personality descriptions. There were tame ones such as if you choose "pink" you were girly. If you choose "yellow" you were dark skin. Then there was the "purple" which they recommended that we try. A little fishy, especially afterwards when they said that personality meant that you were a bit angry because you were sex deprived, naughty little kids. Walking around met tons of old students, maybe about 10% or more were from my JHS, it was so great to see them all! Especially the kids from 3 years ago when I first came to Japan. It felt like it was a great closure to my stay in Tatsuno. I was so happy, and even got to name an "action" boy in my short time there. With two empty cups in his hand flying over his pants, I knew his nickname had to be "superman".
gym
friend, Cookie Monster, and Yumi
Masanori and the other boys
rockin
Tomomi and the "the most beautiful girl in tatsuno nishi chu"
Kim and her flower
me and Nishimura my bball boy
"Habatan" made from cans
Maki showing me how to make some tea
Daniel makes his tea

SWEATING LIKE A DOG ...

Today gathered enough energy to go up to the gym to play some bball with the locals. Played and sweated like I never have before, well its been a year since I met mr. humidity and oh is the humidity back. Just 7 minutes of basketball is equal to 30 minutes of sweating back home. I was in a puddle of sweat in no time, and the lucky thing about humidity is that you only have to work half as hard to get that hard earned sweat out to burn those calories. Ah and on the other end, I finally gave in the A/C demon. I was trying to hold back and not use it, but dang it's getting hot. Oh how cool it is!

THIS IS A PEN

It's always interesting to teach in Japan because even the little things are quite a bit different. A long while back I was telling my 1st grade kids that, "This is a pen." . Shortly after I recieved numerous confused looks. I wondered why until my teacher told me that I say "a" differently to how the kids are taught. Seems to be that in Japan students are taught "a" (あ) with the use of the "ah" sound. But the "a" sound I was using was the "e" (え) sound. Just thought it was interesting as I was reviewing the 1st graders lessons. Well this time around I will tell them that there are two ways to say "a".

So I was discussing the "a" with one of my teachers and mentioned complete sentences, including particles. Then the teacher pointed out that in spoken Japanese language they don't need to include the particle but written wise they do. So sometimes it seems to be that skipping of particles has overflown into English study when the students come up with a sentence such as, "This pen" rather than "This is a pen". Interesting to anlyze how these mistakes come to be and how to correct them. This would probably go to my Master's degree thesis section.

I WENT TO SAN FRANCISCO

The other day I went to elementary school and one of my students was trying to tell me something, so then she went to one of the teachers and brought back a note saying, "I went to San Francisco". How cute, Mutsuki was really excitied to tell me that, so I had to take a picture. She also said she liked big hamburgers the best.

ENGLISH MEETS MY STUDENTS

I like it when the kids are creative. Giving them cool stuff to do sure beats those boring grammar sentences.

(A)It's 50000 dollars (B)No way! (A)Everything is too expensive in this store! (B)No, it isn't you are just poor.


(A)Big burger please! (B)I'm sorry. (A)Why do you apologize? (B)Because big burger is sold out.


(A)Did you enjoy your meal? (B)Oh.. I am sorry. (B)I threw up all the food I had eaten. (A)No, kidding!!

WHO'S BAD?

When the famous Japanese music group SMAP first see their idol Michael Jackson on TV. And of course Michael never heard of these guys before, talked a bit, and then was amazed at the big screen in the back of the set as he wandered around aimlessly.

RICE SEASON

Just like BigFoot, I have been trying to track down the elusive rice planting machine. One day the field is bare, then another its all planted. So luckily when I got out of school I witnessed the mysterious rice planting machine, finally caught on camera.

RAIN RAIN RAIN

The other day it was raining cats and dogs! In Japanese they say "dosha buri" which means like buckets of water. So its rainy season they say, but funny the last two years I didn't see that much rain in June. But I ain't complaining the weather is still great, it's not so humid and "mushi atsui" yet. But maybe it's building up with the rain, oh no!

SAMURAI BLUE!

Samurai Blue is the Japan teams motto this year for the World Cup games. But after watching a crushing defeat the other day from the Aussie's 3-1, the only blue I felt was from the sadness of the loss. Darn, better luck next match! Two more games to go Croatia and Brazil! A must win on both!

ROCKIN AND ROLLIN

Well got an unpleasant wakeup call around 5am this morning. Alot of shakin and rattlin, it was an earthquake, kinda used to it now but no matter how many time you go through it, its scary shit! You don't know how strong its gonna be or how long its going to last. Just have to wait it out, and boy was it a long one, shakin the bookshelf, desks, everything. As long as stuff doesn't start flying out the windows I presume it would be ok. Checked the news and it was a 6.2 from way down south, pretty far, maybe at least 3 or 4 hour drive. Mmmm.. I hope I can just survive before the end of my contract, this chopstick housing got me worried sometimes, ha ha ha. Crossing those fingers!

ANOTHER MARKANE?

Jussi Markkanen? A long lost relative from Finland? Nah, its just the Edmonton Oilers goalie whose name sounds quite familiar! It was just funny seeing his name on ESPN.com when i was cruising the sports pages. Anyways go Oilers! Hope they win the Stanley Cup, now i got someone to root for!

THIS WEEKEND

Headed down to Awaji for probably my last game with InterHyogo, oh the memories of playing soccer, what a bummer. So drove down with the neighbors as well as Mike's English training teacher from Kansai Univ., his name was Taku. Taku kindly gave his weekend up to spend time with a bunch of crazy foreigners, brave soul. Well our game performance wasn't as hot as the weather but we all had a great time just hanging out, no complaints there, nice weekend in the sun, walking barefoot on grass and then some nice yakiniku by night, double nice.

IT WAS A GOOD DAY

First, I was sitting down at my desk and Yukie came in and gave me an envelope. Inside the envelope were pictures that she had taken with her camera of me and all the students in her class from our Kobe trip. I was like, "wow!", so cool! This was coming from a girl who a year ago who didnt even come to school saying she was being bullied and didnt like it, but now she was the leader of that school trip. Kids always suprise ya.

Food! I was kinda bummed that I couldnt order my usual bento today. So i opted to go out and buy it at the store, but when i was about to enter i looked across the street and saw this little cafe with a lunch menu. When crossing the street bumped into some of my high school kids, Nishimura and friend, always good to see the alumni. Anyways ventured into the restaurant, ordered a chicken set. Hot damn, that was one of the best chicken I have had in Japan! Damn, I need to explore more, I have been missing out. Gonna go back and get my fill before I leave.

Then all the classes were great today, even the bad classes, they did their work and had fun. Amazing how a little tinkering of a lesson can make it so much better. If somehing dont work, I dont try to do the same thing again, I always like to tinker with it or give it a new spin and try to make it work. It was boring enough just writing about your school trip which was kinda a bomb last year. So with a little flavor, try to guess who went where and what they ate, or even just smash up your paper, kids like that. Good to see something workout. Always thinking of what to improve, thats kinda my nerdy side.

Then had some free time and played some bball with the kids, damn it was hot today! But it was fun to just screw around and play some 2v2, 3v3, and even Takuto wanted to play some 1v1 which is always fun.

After school ran into Ari and Mao. The funny girls, ah its always good to see em. They also intercepted Mike and Nikki and had a good chat.

Rounding up more excercise, hit up Mike for soccer action in prep for Awaji. Good to run around and sweat and enjoy Tatsuno by the river, its so nice here, gonna miss it. Rarely do I see a spot by the river to live by in Japan.

Now at home, ready to chill and eat some good food! ... and that was a great day ... well after my ice cream desert of course ...